


Caesura

by Amelior8or



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21864892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amelior8or/pseuds/Amelior8or
Summary: It's a long wait for the Once and Future King to come back. But Merlin will still wait.It's the quiet that ages him faster than anything else.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Caesura

**Author's Note:**

> This poor fic languished in my drafts for years, almost complete. I figured now was the right time of year to dust it off and send it out into the world!

It's the quiet that ages him faster than anything else.

That was all that was really left, once Merlin had wept out his grief, had let the pained heaving of his chest ease down into a shushed rise and fall. The water of the lake murmured as it drifted Arthur away, and Merlin couldn't decide if it sounded like sympathy or mockery. All other sounds had softened into muted bird cries and shuffling leaves, and Merlin's quiet, quiet breath. Not even Merlin's heart had the audacity to jar the stillness, not fully. It didn't dare at full booming beats, simply settling for a dull throb - moment after moment after moment of protestation at the numbness, a steady, stubborn reminder from the centre of his chest cavity that he was not yet to follow where his king had gone. 

That was his fate now, he realized. To stand vigil at a tomb and wait for the Once and Future King to rise again, while every moment he lived through felt like living through an eon. But an eon lived was an eon closer to Arthur's return, and until then the world offered a willing quiet to keep him company.

And so he stood, through the wind that tried to rustle his clothes, through the rain that clung to his hair, through days of scorching heat that flushed a burning mark across his skin. It was weeks before he came to the conscious realization that his body no longer craved food or sleep, no longer shivered in the cold or ached from disuse. It was as if his body had stopped living the moment his king had died. Instead, he simply crumpled into a seated guardianship when his legs couldn't stand anymore. His arms around his knees and soft grass around his calves, he felt the chill air finally begin to settle as another day faded into another night, only to warm again into another dawn. And another. And another. 

His magic still crackled in his veins, steeling him, sloughing away his human weaknesses, because the wait would be more than a single human life could withstand. But it had always been his destiny to be just a little bit more than human. And though destiny may have touched his life over and over again with a ruthless hand, Merlin was aware of the bitter certainty that it had never lied to him. If he must wait for Arthur to return, then wait he shall. 

He had lost track of time completely by the time the snow began to fall, muffling the already deadened landscape. He watched the ice thicken and creep across the lake for a whole month before he was willing to believe that his own frozen life could have a chance at more than this. Even still, it wasn't until the melting ice began to pour off him in streams and the songs of spring birds began to trill, sharp and startling, that Merlin could finally pull himself to his unused feet and turn back towards Camelot. 

*

The clamour of people was shocking and distasteful, almost nauseating. For while Camelot mourned the loss of its king, not everyone had the luxury of letting the needs of their bodies go unchecked. The people still needed to go on, to earn an honest wage, to till the ground for next year's harvest, to finish their work at the end of the day and return to their loved ones who still lived and breathed. And with those needs came sounds: vendors bartering and chickens clucking and children playing. Merlin couldn't bring himself to join in their noise, not yet, and as he drifted through the city markets, strange and familiar faces alike silently parted for him, most not even aware that they were doing so. It was not until he approached the gates of the Citadel proper that a single pair eyes drifted to his face and stayed there. The surprise and recognition were audible: a gasp of air, an unexpected huff of relief. 

"Merlin!" said the man, a knight – at one point a friend. "You're alive! How...You've been gone over a year. I – we thought…" 

Leon stopped short of delivering the stunned embrace he had been ready to give as he drew closer and began to study Merlin's face in earnest. Merlin knew that he should give some response, say something to acknowledge his return, but his voice stilled deep within his chest, not yet ready to be found. He watched as Leon pressed his lips together in an understanding nod. The knight placed a hand on Merlin's shoulder, sympathy from a man who had also lost his king, and asked for no more conversation. Instead he swallowed, murmured a soft, "I'll take you to the Queen," before turning and leading the way. 

Queen Guinevere rose from her throne as soon as she saw him, ignoring the rest of her court to draw Merlin into her arms. No words would come to him even then, and all he could do was rest his head on her robed shoulder and try not to let his body collapse under the press of stares from the entire court around them. No words were needed, though, for Gwen was one of his oldest friends in the kingdom, and she was the only other person truly capable of understanding the pain of a Camelot without Arthur. 

"Your hair's gone all white," she said gently as she held him. Merlin's lungs yanked in a sharp inhalation that was almost a sob, and he would never properly remembered if he had managed to make a noise at that moment. All he knew was that Gwen held him, her own tears soaking his tattered clothes as his marred her fine silk. Later, much later, she led him away to the privacy of his own chamber, using the servants passages they both knew by heart, keeping her warm fingers wrapped around his stiff and clumsy hands. 

His first meal is at Gaius's table, full of all his favourite foods. The physician is the first person in Camelot to not bother prompting Merlin into stilted conversation; he simply sits nearby and draws Merlin into a tight embrace before he blows out the candles at the end of the night. 

Gwen had refused to make him anything less than her Royal Advisor, to whom she would bring her concerns as a ruler, questions phrased in such a way that Merlin only ever needed to respond with a nod or shake of his head. She never asked anything more of him, and he never asked how she had found out about his magic, but he knew of the work she put into protecting it. Those who startled at Merlin's newly revealed power, or questioned the royal decree to let magic return to Camelot were simply met with Guinevere's steady gaze until all protest quieted. 

Other times, they would just sit in each other's company, enjoying the rare quiet day in the kingdom, needing no conversation at all. But Merlin would still make clear with a silent hand on her shoulder the depth of his gratitude for her support. 

And things remained that way between them, for nearly two years, until a neighbouring warlord had arranged for the Queen to be magically struck down with an illness days before he invaded. Merlin had pressed his lips together and let his magic lash out in a protective fury that he nearly forgot he had, devastating the enemy and making his message clear: the great and powerful Emrys stood as the protector of Camelot now, and woe to any who tried to disrupt her peace. 

He stumbled back to the castle, exhausted, feeling the _thump_ of his body crashing to the stone floor echo around the halls. Leon and Gaius had pulled him up, and Merlin tried to scrape up the energy to ask —

Gaius waved him silent. “The Queen is safe, Merlin. You’ve kept her safe. She has the time to heal, because of you.”

His first words are not even a week after that. Gwen had insisted on getting back to her duties, and she had requested Merlin's presence immediately, using his arrival as an excuse to shoo out her fussing servants. 

"Honestly, it's like they've forgotten that I've done all of their chores myself, for far longer than they have,” she sighed. "Maybe I'll just start being meaner to them, until they stop smothering me with kindness." 

"I don't know if that'll work," Merlin said, scanning over her reports. "I hear the last King of Camelot threw boots at his servant every other day, and he still didn't get the message." 

For a hanging, breathless moment, Merlin and Gwen stared at each other, both stunned at the words that had slipped out of his mouth, and both stunned that those words had been a joke at Arthur's expense. The Gwen gave a helpless giggle, chuckled something about it being "far less messy than constantly sending him to the stocks," and suddenly they were both laughing like neither of them had in years, laughing like it was being pulled from a deep and forgotten place within them, laughing until they were both collapsed on the floor with tears in their eyes. 

Because it was never truly quiet in Camelot, it was easy to let himself be distracted. Merlin became the ambassador to a surge of people daring to believe the Queen’s promise that magic would no longer be punished. He became an essential scholar for people seeking answers about the history Camelot had hidden and purged. He became the teacher of a new generation of healers and readers and spell-weavers, honouring the memory of Gaius and Gaius’ wry smile.

Merlin was there for birthdays, and weddings, and funerals, and fights. He even began to slowly pick up the art of smiling again, though he never got the colour back in his hair. 

Long lived the Queen, guiding and protecting Camelot with the grace, kindness, and fairness it deserved. Gwen kept Merlin by her side through it all, and together they created the era of peace and prosperity that Arthur had always hoped for. 

But all eras end. 

And Merlin still needed to wait.

*

He had been a bricklayer, a radio announcer, a touring magician with mediocre tricks. He read. First as a squire monk sequestered in a monastery, then as a type setter when the miracle of the printing press boomed through Europe, and finally as a university student over and over again, studying everything from Physics to Architecture to History to Horticulture. He stunned his medieval literature professors with his perfect pronunciation of Old English, and made sure to pick up a new medical degree at least once a century or so. He waited until Albion was at the height of its power, and least likely to be in need, before he walked his way into the Orient and back. The day he returned, he caught the next ship leaving London harbour for the New World and then wandered through growing towns, learning the American drawl and the magic of indigenous peoples. When those around him spoke words of witch hunts and burnings, an old, old fear of persecuted magic made him decide to travel up to Canada, to try his hand at being a frontier farmer. 

He only ever took one trip on an airplane, on a jaunt to Sydney and back, and that was more than enough to confirm his distaste of flying on anything other than a dragon's back. He had missed horses when they were forced to make way for the roaring automobiles born of industrialization, but was surprisingly fond of the rumbling excitement he felt when he stepped onto a train. Mostly, he walked, on strong legs and callused feet. It took longer to get places, but he rarely had a set destination and he had all the time in the world. The wrinkles faded and grew on his face as the centuries drifted by – once, during a particularly noisy Renaissance, bringing him back to as young as sixteen again. Yet no matter how sprightly his bones became, his hair stayed the same: bleached of any colour, a permanent testament to the year-long vigil he had kept at Avalon lifetimes ago, before he began his time as a nomad. 

He had thought that the endless string of wars humanity kept pulling itself into would be full of clamour. Instead, Merlin kept finding himself wandering past abandoned schoolrooms and the remains of bloody battlefields, and even though he knew that air raid sirens would be going off in the distance, all he could hear was the snuffle of wind through disturbed soil and abandoned bicycle spokes. It was then that the quiet was the worst, enveloping his bones and seeping into every crevice that could not be filled with his awe at the progress of humanity. It was a silence that harried at him, reminding him that even now, when Albion – when the whole world – was in such need, it was still not endangered enough to bring back the Once and Future King. The quiet would pull at his heart the way the breeze pulled at the white wisps of his hair, whispering the undeniable fact that Merlin had been waiting for far, far too long for Arthur to return. 

It was around then that he stopped being able to completely fight off the hush of his old, lonely life with the noisy bustle of world progress. Merlin hadn't looked a day under fifty since 1946. Even the charm of that little rock band from Liverpool in the 60's wasn't quite enough to fight off the deep wrinkles of a thousand-year vigil.

*

He spent a lot of days in parks, now. Occasionally, in a coffee shop kind enough to serve a shabby old man. But when the sun was bright and the birds were calling and the children were running and yelling, it was nice to just sit on a park bench and relish the noise.

“You leave her _alone_!” yelled a tiny boy, old enough to have lost his front teeth but not old enough to have grown them back.

Merlin looked over. The yelling boy had planted himself in front of a cowering girl with hearing aids, with his little arms crossed and his little chin jutted in defiance. He was staring down three other kids, all taller, with all the righteousness in the world.

The scuffle they got in wasn’t really Merlin’s business, per se, but he was certainly not above a tiny murmured spell or two that made the yelling boy’s opponents stumble and miss whenever they tried to land a hit on the little whirlwind with bright blond hair.

When the other boys had run off and the shouting was mostly done, Merlin wandered over to check on the girl and offer the boy a tissue for his scraped knees.

“You know, if you like, I could fix that up with magic in a blink,” he said.

"There's no such thing as magic!" the boy said, with the absolute authority of a six-year-old. 

"Now, what clotpole told you something as stupid as that?" Merlin asked. The child wasn’t old enough to have tie-up shoes yet, and he was already a non-believer. What was the world coming to? Merlin turned to the girl and signed, _He’s ungrateful!_

She giggled.

The boy frowned. "My father told me that if I were to be King of the UN someday I couldn't believe in silly things like magic." 

Merlin didn't bother hiding the smirk crawling across his face. "I didn't know the UN was run by a King." 

"Arthur!" the woman's shout cut across Merlin's attention like a blade, and he jerked at the sudden and frenzied slamming of his heart in his ears. He had long ago learned to stop jumping at that name, but this time, for the first time, it didn’t sound like an off-key echo. This time, the name sounded like bells, many large, clanging bells ringing right around his head.

The boy glanced over his shoulder and sighed. "Coming, Ms. Veere,” he called back. "That's one of the mums,” he explained to Merlin. “She’s really nice. We're on a day trip today and I wouldn't have wandered off, but I saw some boys bullying Annie and I had to stop them." The boy – Arthur! – heaved a sigh. "And now I'll prob'ly get in trouble." 

Of course. How could he have missed it for so long? Had he let himself go blind when he decided to not to listen to the world go by? "Arthur, huh?" Merlin said. "You know, my very best friend was named Arthur, ages and ages ago." He could see it now, beneath the young pudginess and missing teeth. He could see the nobility, the greatness that this little boy carried inside him. "And that Arthur would have stood by his actions, knowing that he was right to help another in need, even if he got scolded for it." 

The boy, this tiny, precious boy, stared up at Merlin with a stunning moment of solemn comprehension. He then nodded and turned to the approaching adult, and Merlin let his smile soften as he recognized the curls, the dark skin, the gait, the gentle and teasing grin. But it was the eyes he remembered, the kind eyes that he could not possibly forget, even after centuries of solitude. 

Merlin nodded towards the shy girl staring in Arthur's direction. "He was simply trying to save a damsel in distress." 

"Thank you for keeping an eye on him. Arthur's truly the sweetest boy, even though he’ll talk your ear right off about his plans to rule the world one day!”

Well then, it looks like some things didn't change. “I’ve heard worse people talk about their plans to rule,” Merlin said. “Ms. Veere, was it? I’m sure he’ll be an excellent King of the UN.”

“I _will_ be!” Arthur interjected. “Everyone will have food and everyone will be safe and I’ll fight anyone who tries to stop that.” He frowned. “Maybe when I’m a bit bigger, though.”

“Don’t worry,” Merlin said. “When you get to be as old as I am, you learn the value of a little patience. I’m willing to wait to see what you’ll turn out to be when you’re a bit bigger. Though you might want to look into swords if you’re planning on fighting _everyone_ who tries to stop you.”

Arthurs eyes widened. “ _Swords_ ,” he whispered.

The woman laughed, the warmth of her chuckle echoing the soft crinkle around her eyes. “That’s a conversation to have with your dad, Arthur. Let’s go back for lunch. Give a thank you to this man who claims to be old,” she winked.

“I _am_ old,” Merlin scoffed.

“Please! You've barely gotten any grey hairs on you! I've met men much older than you, and trust me, they're not nearly as kind as you are. And my name is Gwen. Arthur! Annie!” 

She wandered off, the children running up to her as they walked to some waving parents a ways away. Merlin watched them go, watched _him_ go, then paused to consider what Ms. Veere — Gwen — had said.

He left the park and crossed at the nearest intersection, startled at a blaring car horn and a screeching of slammed breaks. The clanging bell above the convenience store door echoed through the aisles, and Merlin found himself wandering to a stand of cheap sunglasses, to stare at himself in the adjoining plastic mirror. 

He couldn't recall catching a reflection of himself in the last half-decade or so, but prior to that, he looked no different than he had the last time he had left Camelot: bowed and ancient, shaggy and white. He was still shaggy, with a face full of wrinkles scored onto his skin by the wind and the sun. But while there were stubborn strands of sharp white refusing to give up their centuries-long reign, the rest of his hair was full of colour, a rich earthy brown so dark it might as well have been black. 

The television above the store till burst into riotous cheers, and Merlin glanced up to see the dash of footie players running a victory lap around the screen. In the corner, two teenagers shouted with loud laughter over some joke involving the candy they were holding, and a woman trying to soothe her wailing, hiccuping baby drifted by outside. Merlin stared back at his reflection again, and watched as a beaming grin split across his face. There was a chuckle rising in his throat, an actual chuckle. He would likely spend the rest of the afternoon howling with manic glee in the park. 

The wait, it appeared, was finally over. Albion would have some dark days ahead, no doubt, but there would be a man, currently a little boy with scuffed knees, who would someday lead them back into the light once again. Merlin began to whistle. 

**Author's Note:**

> Caesura: a break or a pause. In music, the moment of silence for a musician to catch their breath.


End file.
